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I have always imagined that Paradise would be a kind of library.
Jorge Luis Borges

So have I become your enemy by telling you the truth?
Saint John, Letter to Galatians 4:16

Freedom of Religion - Freedom from Religion - Freedom of Public Display of Religion and Traditions

We establish no religion in this country, nor will we ever. We command no worship. We mandate no belief. But we poison our society when we remove its theological underpinnings. We court corruption when we leave it bereft of belief. All are free to believe or not believe; all are free to practice a faith or not. But those who believe must be free to speak of and act on their belief.
--
Ronald Reagan (Temple Hillel Speech, 1984)

Monday, June 5, 2006

One More Time with Facts: The DaVinci Code is Fiction

Here I go again, but maybe a little more blunt and to the point?
The DaVinci Code novel is the popular talk of the town and because the gist of the story involves conspiracy, it is popular. That is what made Michael Moore’s “documentary” films so popular, not to mention that it satisfied Bush Haters in their lust for character assassination. Both of them are making money off of fiction. Don’t get me wrong, I am hopping mad at the Bush administration over several things, one of them his immigration policy that is coupled with the insane idea to create a North American federation that mirrors the European Union. What happened to the idea that the American system is not only unique, but is the best system (the way it was designed by the Founding Fathers) that has ever been drafted in human history? I am against certain Bush policies because of fact, not fiction or that I belong to the Bush Haters Club - the same applied for my views of the Clinton administration. But I digress …

Mike S. Adams, in his article, The Portable Dan Brown, writes
I used to think The Koran was the best book to read in the airport, simply because carrying it guarantees you’ll never get searched by airport security. Later, I decided that The Book of Mormon was better because it guarantees the person sitting next to you will never start a conversation during the flight. Now, I’ve decided - once and for all, I think – that The Da Vinci Code has both of them topped.”
Because of the recent popularity of believing a book of fiction to be historical evidence introduced by Dan Brown, therefore the following is submitted, based on Mike Adams' conversational points and backing him up on the historical aspects of his statements:
(1) The Bible was written by males giving evidence of patriarchal oppression. Does that make the reports generated from the Women’s Resource Center less read worthy? Is it a conspiracy to oppress men? Does this make me a member of the Macho Men?
(2) Gnostic Gospels were written approximately 325 AD, which means none of the writers were living when Jesus was walking the Earth; but the Gospels selected by the first Church (Nicea) committee were written by eyewitness accounts of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Mike Adams writes:
I just try to treat the life of Jesus as a murder mystery, which is easy to do since he was, in fact, murdered. If you want to solve the mystery, you have to know everything you can about the victim. To do so, you should prefer eyewitness testimony over all other forms of evidence. There was no better type of evidence back then. And, of course, only a fool would give preference to the accounts that were written later. That is a backwards way of thinking. I mean that literally.”
(Adams should know, he is a professor of criminology).
(3) The DaVinci Code suggests that members of the Council of Nicea conspired to exclude certain books for sexist reasons. False. The DaVinci Code is a work of fiction; one can know this when shopping for a copy at the local bookstore because it can be found in the “fiction” section.
(4) There was a conspiracy to label Mary Magdalene (later canonized as a saint) as a place in Christian hierarchy and Pope Gregory labeled her a prostitute as an intentional act to keep in tune with the members of the Council of Nicea. False. Pope Gregory made the statement in 591 AD. During the time of the council Pope Gregory would have been over 250 years old. Apparently conspiracy theorists have not studied their history.
The Papal history is filled with corruption and early quest for power over the people and the monarchies they controlled, and this is fact concerning the first organized church of Christendom – the Holy Roman Catholic Church history. There were also those who were learned men who contributed to the history of the Christian Church, like Saint Augustine, and there were also women who, in their own fashion, served the Church and later became sainted. If one picks up the novel, Stargate or watches the film, does that mean that there is evidence that the pyramids were built by extraterrestrials? 
I rest my case.

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